The road to Salta

It´s been a while since we´ve had reliable enough internet access to update the blog. When it takes 10 minutes for the gmail homepage to load, you know you´re not meant to be sitting at a computer :) We´ve been in a lot of smaller cities since leaving Mendoza and visited several parks along the way. But rather than give a light overview of everything we´ve been up to, I´m opting to give a more in depth description of one particular leg of the journey...

From Tucuman, we caught the one bus that goes to a small town called Cafayate. The road was full of switch backs and changing scenery, prompting much tapping of the shoulder and exclamations of "Look!¨" and "Did you see that?!". At first every donkey elicits such a response, but they soon become pasé, as do the goats, sheep and llamas. Five hours later, we arrive in Cafayate, a town of no more than 9,000. I declared it heaven with its warm sun, cheap food and great wines, and convince Kate to spend three nights here. But it was the road to Salta, about 4 hrs north of Cafayate that was truly incredible.

Within about 5 blocks you´re on a dirt road. Eventually the pavement picks back up as the road passes two famous wineries, their vines dormant for now. The torrontes grape vines are soaking up the dry, dusty air and the gale-force winds that make them flourish in the one and only place on earth. They produce a fruity smelling, but satisfyingly dry white wine for which the area is famous within Argentina.

After another 5 or 6 km the wineries and scattered trees give way to shrubs and cactuses before melting into sand dunes, held together with harsh, hardy looking bushes and giant candelabra cacti. The chard remains of trees destroyed in flames a few years ago dot the landscape, preserved by the dry, arid climate. The sand transforms from yellow-brown to pink and red quickly. The greens, browns, yellows and reds of the shrubs extend as far as you can see. One plant in particular - Kate´s favorite - stands out with its nearly flourescent green bark. It´s called a brea, electric green because its bark does the photosynthesis work in the winter.

Suddenly it seems as though the whole world has turned red with cliffs and spires rising up out of the sand and purple, blue mountains peeking out from the distance.

Slowly the road begins to rise, winding its way up through canyons beside the mostly dry riverbed of the Río Conchas. The place is known as the Quebrada de Conchas or La Quebrada de Cafayate.

Now color variations break the red hills...in perfect lines are woven all manners of yellows, shades of pink and stark white and black. The sandy floor glitters with small and large chunks of quartz - white, yellow and pink. Sections of greens and yellow plant life mark where a river sometimes flows.

The striations become more and more dramatic till you can barely believe what your eyes are telling you. And still you´re driving up, getting closer to those mountains all the while...the cliffs around you climbing higher and higher. The sky behind them is the kind of bright blue only achieved in such dry places.

Ruins like a mini Mesa Verde are carved into a cliff face. The rock seems to rise out of the ground at the most alarming angles, as though the earth had just ejected chunks here and there, calling to mind the Flatirons of Boulder, Colorado...only these are red.

A line of white dots marks a particularly strange formation called "The Friar". It´s hard to believe it´s actually natural as it looks like a rough sculpture. Before long we pass another odd formation just a few meters off the road, "The Frog". A giant composite rock, its base of red stone, shaped just like a squating from with the legs folded and appropriately rough skin.

Off to the left a steep mountainside reveals giant fissures, one known as "The Cathedral" stretching back no more than 100 meters into a huge opening big enough for one rioutous mass. The next, "La Garganta del Diablo" or Devil´s Throat (this one sounds so much better in Spanish, I think), winds back much further, seemingly endless if you can manage to scramble up the steeper sections.

This entire time the bus has been stopping to let people off the what seems like the middle of no where...nothing but rock and a mostly dry river. Where are these people going?

More and more of the rock is covered in scrubby green bushes and the river bed sprouts stunted trees. The road remains flanked by pink sand. And it continues like this for at least another 45 minutes, during which my heavy eyes start to close. Three hours later we´ll find ourselved in Salta, our last stop before crossing over the Andes to Chile.